Musk’s DOGE protégé leaves government
by Alex Samuels, Daily Kos Staff
Coristine, a recent high school
graduate-turned-technologist, was part of the small group of Musk
loyalists recently granted full-time positions at the General
Services Administration, which the so-called Department of Government
Efficiency used as its main hub.
A White House official confirmed that he resigned June 23,
though the reasons remain unclear. By the next day, his government email
and Google Workspace accounts were deactivated, and his name was removed from
the internal White House DOGE directory.
Coristine’s time at DOGE was short but chaotic. Hired early
in Donald Trump’s second term, he quickly became an example of the
agency’s dysfunction: young, unqualified, and given broad access to sensitive
government systems. He attended high-level meetings across federal agencies,
including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the
Department of Education.
His persona only made things more absurd. Coristine embraced
the nickname “Big Balls,” even adding it to his LinkedIn profile—something Musk
reportedly found hilarious.
“People on LinkedIn take themselves, like, super seriously and are pretty averse to risk, and I was like, ‘I want to be neither of those things,’” Coristine said in a Fox News interview in May. “Honestly, I didn’t even think anyone would notice.”
Well, they noticed. And so did the cast of “Saturday Night
Live,” which mentioned him during a cold open in March.
But it wasn’t just the nickname that attracted attention.
Coristine’s rapid rise—from Neuralink intern and Northeastern University engineering student to DOGE
protégé—worried longtime civil servants. He had previously
been fired from a data security firm after allegedly leaking sensitive
information to a competitor.
Still, he wasn’t a passive figure. Since February, Coristine
had been involved in several high-stakes DOGE projects, including efforts
to cut the budget at the State Department, where he
helped plan the closure of diplomatic posts and layoffs of foreign service
staff.
He also participated in activities at the U.S. Agency for
International Development and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and he
reportedly attended a Commerce Department meeting about Trump’s “gold card” visa plan, which offers citizenship for $5
million. Just days before his resignation, he was meeting with Treasury
officials, according to WIRED.
Democrats, unsurprisingly, celebrated his departure.
“He got DOGE’d. Gone but not forgotten,” Rep. Jared
Moskowitz of Florida wrote
on X.
“That must be deflating,” quipped Sen.
Ruben Gallego of Arizona.
Coristine’s exit comes after Musk’s own departure, suggesting that DOGE’s scorched-earth phase may soon be coming to an
end.
Since Musk’s messy breakup with Trump, DOGE staffers have been
preparing for the fallout. According to The Washington Post, some of Musk’s allies were already
losing access to Federal Aviation Administration buildings. Even before the
public feud, Cabinet secretaries had already begun reasserting control over hiring.
Maybe this really is the beginning of the end—and with it,
the collapse of a reckless cost-cutting campaign that gutted everything
from Social Security to scientific
research.
